I wish the landscape worked like this...

charon2112

Join Date 02/2009

+62

I wish the landscape worked like this...

I really wish that the landscape and terrain had more to do with planning city layout. As it is now, unless there's a resource nearby, the terrain is almost meaningless when it comes to planning your empire. I'd like to illustrate my idea below. In this screenshot is a city from my current game, you can see the cultural border to the left and top of the picture. Also, to the Northwest of my city is a mountainous area, with some hills. To the North is a little forest. To the South is ocean. All of this is within my ZOC. I've marked three tiles in my screenshot for ID purposes. My idea is this. I'd like to be able to click on the tile marked 'A' and build, say, a mine. This mine would produce something, metal maybe, in the surrounding eight tiles. It wouldn't have to be a lot, maybe a mountain would produce 0.3 per turn, and a hill 0.2 per turn. So the total yield from that mine would be 1.8 (if my math is right), and maybe this could grow with certain tech researches. Secondly, I'd like to be able to build a wood mill, or lumber shop, or something in the tile marked 'B'. This would collect materials form the surrounding eight tiles that have forest in them in a similar fashion to the mine. On the tile marked 'C', perhaps a fishery could be built, producing food from the water tiles within a one-tile radius.

A system like this would completely change the way I think about city planning, you would have to really study the map, and find good spots for cities. As it is now, I don't have to give any thought at all to where I place a city (assuming no resources), because the terrain on the map tiles means nothing at all.

Thank you.

elemental

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Actually, as Gene1966 said, I have long thought that resources should be on terrain that makes sense for that resource. It is stupid to find an old growth forest in the desert.

Mountains and hills should have common iron, marble, or clay resources, food should be in plains, forests in forests (duh), and oases in deserts. The research resources could be anywhere, though I would like some sort of "ruined city" terrain.

Also, artic terrain shouldn't change to the factions special terrain within the influence zone and could provide resources such as wild game for food and bears as mounts.

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Give cities a chance of receiving a small local bonus based on the terrain type. Lots of nearby forests and they get a game meat resource that cannot be traded but allows the city to house +10 citizens. Lots of nearby coast, fish resource, +5 citizens and +2 gildar. Lots of nearby hills, +2 gildar and +2 materials. Small things that won't really change the game, but will make the terrain an active participant in the building process.

I'd also add in a trait called Wilderness Fighter or some such that gives built units and heroes a small bonus to attack and defense whenever they fight on whatever the majority terrain type of the capital city is. A situationally useful bonus that rewards someone who wants to RP a bunch of tree huggers or desert fighters with increased combat effectiveness.

I also think that all cities should have a base upkeep cost of 10 gildar each. New cities would then imposes a significant cost to the nation rather than being a net positive. This base cost should increase by 1 for every five cities the player has -- so, four cities and you pay 40 gildar, 5 cities and you pay 55 gildar. Increasing the marginal cost of cities is an effective way of reducing the willingness of the player to proceed beyond breakpoints.

Given the above base costs, the capital should generate 10 gildar, giving it a net upkeep of zero. Otherwise the player would be bankrupt shortly after their first few turns.

I'd also increase the level 4 and 5 city bonuses, to make city specialization a relatively more attractive option. There might also be scope for reducing the value of citizen tax revenue in level 1 and 2 cities, again to make the early expansion a bit more difficult and to reduce the value of numerous tiny towns.

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